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Top 10 Healthcare Predictions in 2020
What can you look forward to in healthcare in 2020?
- The debate expects to get hotter between healthcare systems, pharmacists, and Physicians, Consumer vs. Clinical, Human empathy vs. Machine Intelligence.
- Many factors are involved in implementing and enforcing change in healthcare.
- Complex and slow-to-change policies are an obvious factor, but environmental and technological factors also contribute to changes in healthcare.
- Illness trends, doctor demographics and technology also contribute to shifts in our overall healthcare system.
- As our society evolves, our healthcare requirements naturally evolve.
- Here is how experts see the dialog around our health care system evolving in 2020.
1- There is a push to deliver home-based care will continue
- One of the Top 10 Healthcare in 2020, an under-appreciated driver of costs in health care is the price of hospitalisation.
- The average hospital bed costs more than $2,000 a day.
- This big price tag, combined with enabling technologies.
- Evolving patient preferences is creating pressure for health care delivery organisations and health plans to think differently about how and where care is delivered.
- Home-based primary care, urgent care, palliative care, and even hospital-at-home care will continue to grow in popularity for patients.
- Meanwhile, it will get a mixed reception from the people who deliver care.
- While, they may value the intimacy afforded by home-based care.
- They may not appreciate the windshield time and the relative inefficiency of traveling to homes instead of working out of clinics.
2- The balance of power will begin to shift from hospital systems back to physician groups
- Physician groups who face acquisition by hospital systems are looking for an alternative.
- One of the most promising is being offered by Aledade, the venture-backed company that organizes private physician groups into accountable care organizations (ACOs).
- Likewise, within specific specialties, such as oncology and cardiology.
- The private equity companies are beginning to roll up provider groups to drive performance, negotiate more favorable contracts, and leverage purchasing power.
- Companies like will grow in number as physicians seek ways to remain independent of hospital systems.
- Surely, as markets evolve, it remains a distinct possibility that even equity-backed physician groups will eventually end up acquired by large hospital systems.
3- Drug pricing will continue to be a front-page issue; at the same time, pharmaceutical innovation will also dominate headlines
- We are now entering a phase where drug prices will continue to draw negative attention.
- However, this attention will be balanced by the breath-taking innovation coming from biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
- As these breakthroughs multiply, expect the national dialog to shift focus from the high cost of drugs.
- In order to find new and different ways to pay for them in order to expand access to the most innovative products.
4- Big Tech and Silicon Valley will continue to play in health care, but they won’t upend the system anytime soon.
- There’s a lot of talk about tech companies entering the care delivery space and having a transformative impact on it as one of the Top 10 Healthcare in 2020.
- We should expect these companies primarily to enable care models that make extensive use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain technologies.
- That said, don’t expect a big payoff right away; it will be years before these innovations impact care at scale, allowing big tech to develop material revenues in health care.
5- Big box retailers and other atypical organizations will attempt to enter the health care market with a big splash.
- Walmart and Best Buy are just two of the national retailers that have taken steps recently to enter the health care market.
- There will be more and more, as many of them will rush headlong into an industry they know little about.
- Additionallt, they won’t take too much time to learn their way around.
- As a result, many will roll out ill-conceived products and services, and make a predictable set of mistakes.
- And then, just as quickly as they entered the market, expect many of these companies to turn tail and leave.
6- Amid revelations about data privacy, companies that are transparent and ethical will come out ahead.
- Recent disclosures about biased algorithms and data privacy are just the first of many such revelations we can expect in the coming year of Top 10 Healthcare in 2020.
- Potentially questionable uses and ownership of data will raise eyebrows and blood pressures.
- Particularly as Americans who have used services for DNA testing come to terms.
- The fact that they may not have fully understood the privacy implications when they handed their genetic data over for analysis.
7- Social determinants of health, expect more talk than action
- Lots of companies are talking about social determinants of health (or “drivers of health,” as many are beginning to refer to them), but a close examination reveals that only a few companies are designing substantial interventions and making innovative breakthroughs in the space.
- Don’t expect that to change in the near future.
8- AI Begins to Prove Useful
- After several years of pure hype, beyond being able to recognize images, AI will begin to become useful clinically.
- While we remain equally excited about non-clinical use cases like more efficient billing, coding, credentialing, and provider directories, we think that AI use cases to support biomedical research and clinical decision support will begin to become useful and practical.
9- Mental health conditions and substance abuse disorders will take the main-stage
- New startups that increase access to care for mental health conditions and substance use disorders have been growing in number.
- That’s a good sign of the Top 10 Healthcare in 2020.
- Moreover, it may take more important, stigma around behavioural health conditions is slowly diminishing.
- For instance, as prominent public figures come forward to disclose their personal challenges more.
- These challenges include depression, addiction, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and other common yet debilitating mental health conditions.
- In the future, Top 10 Healthcare in 2020 expects talking about and receiving treatment for behavioural health conditions to become de-stigmatized — and we will be a better society for it.
10- The public will begin to examine the behaviours and practices of “non-profit” health systems
- Too many non-profit hospitals and health systems have operated for too long like for-profits—and people and communities are beginning to take notice.
- Unsustainable rate increases; surprise billing; medical collections leading to bankruptcy.
- Expect regulators to begin a robust conversation about what requirements need to be met in order to maintain non-profit status.
- In some cases, non-profit board members with a clear focus on the public good will question whether the for-profit management style is the best way to provide health care to their communities.
Conclusion:
- What can you look forward to in healthcare in 2020?
- Many factors are involved in implementing and enforcing change in healthcare.
- As our society evolves, our healthcare requirements naturally evolve.
- Here is how experts see the dialog around our health care system evolving in 2020.
References:
- Top 10 Health Care Industry Predictions For The Year 2020, from this LINK.
- Health Care Investors Predict 10 Ways the Industry Will Change in 2020, from this LINK.
- Top 8 Healthcare Predictions for 2019, from this LINK.